A mass-mailing system, in general, has an enclosure supply section and an insertion station. The enclosure supply section has a gathering section where the enclosure material is gathered before it is inserted into an envelope in the insertion station. This gathering section is sometimes referred to as a chassis subsystem, which includes a gathering transport with pusher fingers rigidly attached to a conveying means and a plurality of enclosure feeders mounted above the transport. If the enclosure material contains many documents, these documents must be separately fed from different enclosure feeders. After all the released documents are gathered, they are put into a stack and the stack is conveyed to an insertion station to be inserted into an envelope. Envelopes are separately fed to the inserting station, one at a time, and each envelope is placed on a platform facing down with its flap flipped back all the way. At the same time, a mechanical or pneumatic device is used to open the envelope. The stack of enclosure material is than automatically inserted into the opened envelope.
Some mailing systems have a folding station for folding the enclosure material into a packet. The packet is then conveyed to the inserting station for insertion.
An exemplary mass-mailing system 1, as shown in FIG. 1, includes an enclosure supply station 10, an insertion station 20 and a mail processing station 30. As mentioned above, the enclosure supply station 10 can be a folding station or an enclosure gathering station. The enclosure gathering station gathers a plurality of documents 100 and collates them into a stack 110. After the enclosure is inserted into an envelope 120 in the insertion station 20, the stuffed envelope 130 is sealed and addressed to become a complete mailpiece 140. This can be carried out in the processing station 30. The processing station 30 may have a postage meter to provide a postage indicia on the envelope. The processed mailpieces are typically stacked.
Inserter machines are well known in the art, and need not be described in detail for purposes of this application. For example, DePasquale et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,817,368) discloses a mail inserting and collating apparatus that includes an envelope conveyor for continuously conveying envelopes along a predetermined route to receive a plurality of inserts. The inserted envelopes are then sealed in another path. Chodack et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 6,418,357) discloses a method for synchronizing an envelope inserter wherein the motion of a collating transport motor is synchronized to an overhead transport motor so that the collation of enclosure material can be inserted into an envelope. Allen et al. U.S. Pat. No. 6,305,680) discloses a system for providing a set of collated enclosure material to an inserter system for envelope insertion purposes. Belec et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 5,388,388) discloses an envelope insertion station operatively connected to a document feeding device for receiving documents to be inserted into an envelope.
Typically an enclosure supply station 10 comprises a plurality of enclosure feeders 12, as shown in FIG. 2. Each of enclosure feeders 12 is used to release one sheet of documents at a time onto a chassis 14. Feeders 12 may be of several different types, including rotary or swing-arm feeders. The released documents are carried downstream on a conveyer belt 16 driven by a transport mechanism 52, for example, so that the documents can be collated into a stack 110. In the insertion station 20, an envelope feeder 22 is used to release one envelope at a time into an insertion area so as to allow an insertion device 24 to insert the document stack 110 into the envelope. The insertion station 20 is operatively linked to a transport mechanism 54 for driving the stuffed envelope 130 out of the insertion area. The stuffed envelope 130 may be gathered by an operator and moved into the processing station 30. As shown in FIG. 2, a plurality of motion control units 70 are used to drive the transport mechanisms 52, 54, the insertion device 24, the envelope feeder 22 and the enclosure feeders 12. These motion control units are under the command of a central control console 200. The control console controls the sequence of events in the insertion operations. It controls the timing of each enclosure feeder, the timing of envelope feeder and the speed of the transport mechanisms, for example. The insertion station and the enclosure supply station may have a plurality of sensors 62, 64, 66 to ensure that the machine is operating properly. These sensors are operatively connected to the control console for jam monitoring, for example.
Inserter machines can be leased to a mailer who may not have the need or financial resources to buy such a machine. Thus, it is advantageous and desirable to provide a method and device to allow and monitor the use of the leased machine to make sure that the machine is used in accordance with limitations agreed in the lease.